28 September 2013

If you think I'll sit around as the world goes by
You're thinkin' like a fool cause it's a case of do or die
Out there is a disaster waitin' to be slayed
You think I'll let it go you're mad
You've got another thing comin'

That's right here's where the talkin' ends
Well listen this night there'll be some action spent
Drive hard I'm callin' all the shots
I got an ace card comin' down on the rocks

Both parties are trying to feed the people some old, stale, Big Government
Establishment dogfood and we’re not settling for it
anymore. This is making them quite snitty. I say, 'Turn up the fire, volume, and power!'

Personally, I have changed my mind about postponing the Individual Mandate.
Obviously, it should have been postponed when Obama gave Big Business an
extra year, but it wasn’t. Instead of bailing out Democrats,
Republicans should let the full pain of Obamacare go into effect. Give Obama what he wants with the proviso that Obamacare go into effect EXACTLY
AS WRITTEN.

No waivers or tax breaks for the
‘Top 1%’ while the 99% are royally screwed. No delays for anyone. No waivers for anyone, especially big companies like General 'Taxes are for little people!' Electric, Microsoft, Berkshire Hathaway, News Corp, the Koch Bros, you name the business and we can join the left and the right. No accommodations to special interest groups. No outs for Labour. No repeal of the medical device tax. No rewriting of provisions by apparatchiks. No Federal tax money for exchanges run in states that opted not to create their own,AS PER THE EXPLICIT LANGUAGE OF THE ACT.(Federal funding for subsidies is limited by the Act to state-run exchanges even though the Treasury is trying to John Roberts the language). A photo ID and proof of citizenship must be produced before any enrollment, service or treatment as is specifically required by the obviously 'racist' Affordable Care Act. No imperial postponements or decrees by The Unstable One. Any deviations much be challenged in court immediately with restraining orders and permanent injunctions sought.

Then, chant a
mantra for a year that Obama and the Democrats are responsible for the hell of Obamacare and Republicans didn't want to inflict anymore harm on Americans by shutting down the government(!) While it's true that the Democrats shut down the government several times solely on the issue of abortion during the administration of Jimmy Carter, one of their own, the MSM will not give anyone any cheers for attempting to save Americans from the Holy Grail that they - and their fellow Progressives - have sought for a century. They are the extremists. They don't care about consequences. They don't give a damn if your family loses its health insurance as long as they can feel good about themselves for granting the indulgence of 'universal healthcare' (remember that health insurance =/= health care and if you don't believe this Brit, ask another) to the collective masses. Let's scream to high heaven exactly this: 'My fellow Americans, the pain that you are enduring has been solely brought to you by the Democrat Party.'

Let’s get this clusterfark started and stop bailing out those that smashed it down our throats in the first place by using reconciliation after Scott Brown was elected by the bluest of states to act as the 41st vote to prevent passage of this centrally-planned, top-down, one-size-fits-all piece of shit.

Let the people get sooooo angry that Obama, Reid, and Pelosi will
pray that the least that will happen to them will be that of former Congressman Dan Rostenkowski, who
was waylaid by a bunch of seniors livid with his Medicare Catastrophic Coverage Act of 1988. Fortunately, they could only chase
him the short distance to his nearby Crown Vic (or some same pol car) and beat on it until
he got away. Today's Democrats will WISH for the Rostenkowski Treatment. Of course, they
probably are unaware of the result of that minor clash: Rostenkowski's Medicare Catastrophic
Coverage Act of 1988, which Dems passed and Reagan signed into law, was repealed, in toto, in 1989.

Sure, it is no longer 1989. That's quite undeniable. People are angrier today and much less polite, respectful, and controllable than they were 24 years ago. So, who knows? But, let's find out by turning every Democrat, who voted for Obamacare, and every
Republican, who voted to fund it, into a
running-for-his-life-Dan-Rostenkowski!

'Buried In The Archives,' The Original Town-Hall Battle

'Don’t you delayers know how painful a shut down will be
for many Americans? Why are they wasting everyone’s time with this
meaningless, empty symbolism?'

- xblade on September 28, 2013 at 4:54 PM

Let the PAIN begin to rain down hard immediately…with the FULL IMPLEMENTATION OF OBAMACARE.

The government could shutdown for a bloody year and I wouldn’t give a damn, but now I am out for blood.

You think Americans would incur pain with a shutdown? Just imagine the
pain that they are going to get with skyrocketing insurance premiums,
former ACORN workers getting all of their personal information as they
navigate people through the exchanges (Hope they have LifeLock!), taxes
on OTC drugs, crutches, wheelchairs, and other medical devices, drug
shortages, a lack of medical innovation and R&D, and find that their
doctors will no longer see them or they have to wait weeks instead of
days to get an appointment.

So, YES!, let’s not shutdown the government. Let’s get this
clusterfark started so that I might have the pleasure of seeing Maerose
Prizzi being chased down the street in her heels like Dan Rostenkowski.
On the bright side, we will learn if an overly-Botoxed face moves when
a political princess is being chased down by a band of sans culottes.

'I will not negotiate...and remember, it is MY military - not Congress', not the Court's, and, certainly, not the United States of America's and her people - in case you get any Chief Justice John Marshall ideas.'

The world misses the old America, the one before the crash—the crashes—of the past dozen years.

That is the takeaway from conversations the past week in New York,
where world leaders gathered for the annual U.N. General Assembly
session. Our friends, and we have many, speak almost poignantly of the
dynamism, excellence, exuberance and leadership of the nation they had,
for so many years, judged themselves against, been inspired by,
attempted to emulate, resented.

As for those who are not America's friends, some seem still confused,
even concussed, by the new power shift. What is their exact place in
it? Will it last? Will America come roaring back? Can she? Does she have
the political will, the human capital, the old capability?

It is a world in a new kind of flux, one that doesn't know what to make of America anymore. In part because of our president.

"We want American leadership," said a member of a diplomatic
delegation of a major U.S. ally. He said it softly, as if confiding he
missed an old friend.

"In the past we have seen some America
overreach," said the prime minister of a Western democracy, in a
conversation. "Now I think we are seeing America underreach." He was
referring not only to foreign policy but to economic policies, to the
limits America has imposed on itself. He missed its old economic
dynamism, its crazy, pioneering spirit toward wealth creation—the old
belief that every American could invent something, get it to market,
make a bundle, rise.

The prime minister spoke of a great anxiety and his particular hope.
The anxiety: "The biggest risk is not political but social. Wealthy
societies with people who think wealth is a given, a birthright—they do
not understand that we are in the fight of our lives with countries and
nations set on displacing us. Wealth is earned. It is far from
being a given. It cannot be taken for granted. The recession reminded us
how quickly circumstances can change." His hope? That the things that
made America a giant—"so much entrepreneurialism and vision"—will, in
time, fully re-emerge and jolt the country from the doldrums.

The second takeaway of the week has to do with a continued decline in admiration for the American president. Barack Obama's
reputation among his fellow international players has deflated, his
stature almost collapsed. In diplomatic circles, attitudes toward his
leadership have been declining for some time, but this week you could
hear the disappointment, and something more dangerous: the sense that he
is no longer, perhaps, all that relevant. Part of this is due,
obviously, to his handling of the Syria crisis. If you draw a line and
it is crossed and then you dodge, deflect, disappear and call it
diplomacy, the world will notice, and not think better of you. Some of
it is connected to the historical moment America is in.

But some of it, surely, is just five
years of Mr. Obama. World leaders do not understand what his higher
strategic aims are, have doubts about his seriousness and judgment, and
read him as unsure and covering up his unsureness with ringing words.

A scorching assessment of the president as foreign-policy actor came
from a former senior U.S. diplomat, a low-key and sophisticated man who
spent the week at many U.N.-related functions. "World leaders are very
negative about Obama," he said. They are "disappointed, feeling he's not
really in charge. . . . The Western Europeans don't pay that much
attention to him anymore."

The diplomat was one of more than a dozen U.S. foreign-policy hands
who met this week with the new president of Iran, Hasan Rouhani. What
did he think of the American president? "He didn't mention Obama, not
once," said the former envoy, who added: "We have to accept the fact
that the president is rather insignificant at the moment, and rely on
our diplomats." John Kerry, he said, is doing a good job.

Had he ever seen an American president treated as if he were so
insignificant? "I really never have. It's unusual." What does he make of
the president's strategy: "He doesn't know what to do so he stays out
of it [and] hopes for the best." The diplomat added: "Slim hope."

This reminded me of a talk a few weeks ago, with another veteran
diplomat who often confers with leaders with whom Mr. Obama meets. I had
asked: When Obama enters a room with other leaders, is there a sense
that America has entered the room? I mentioned de Gaulle—when he was
there, France was there. When Reagan came into a room, people stood:
America just walked in. Does Mr. Obama bring that kind of mystique?

"No," he said. "It's not like that."

When the president spoke to the
General Assembly, his speech was dignified and had, at certain points, a
certain sternness of tone. But after a while, as he spoke, it took on
the flavor of re-enactment. He had impressed these men and women once.
In the cutaways on C-Span, some delegates in attendance seemed
distracted, not alert, not sitting as if they were witnessing something
important. One delegate seemed to be scrolling down on a BlackBerry, one
rifled through notes. Two officials seated behind the president as he
spoke seemed engaged in humorous banter. At the end, the applause was
polite, appropriate and brief.

The president spoke of Iran and
nuclear weapons—"we should be able to achieve a resolution" of the
question. "We are encouraged" by signs of a more moderate course. "I am
directing John Kerry to pursue this effort."

But his spokesmen had suggested the possibility of a brief meeting or
handshake between Messrs. Obama and Rouhani. When that didn't happen
there was a sense the American president had been snubbed. For all the
world to see.

Which, if you are an American, is embarrassing.

While Mr. Rouhani could not meet with
the American president, he did make time for journalists, diplomats and
businessmen brought together by the Asia Society and the Council on
Foreign Relations. Early Thursday evening in a hotel ballroom, Mr.
Rouhani spoke about U.S.-Iranian relations.

He appears to be intelligent, smooth, and he said all the right
things—"moderation and wisdom" will guide his government, "global
challenges require collective responses." He will likely prove a tough
negotiator, perhaps a particularly wily one. He is eloquent when
speaking of the "haunted" nature of some of his countrymen's memories
when they consider the past 60 years of U.S.-Iranian relations.

Well, we have that in common.

He seemed to use his eloquence to bring a certain freshness, and
therefore force, to perceived grievances. That's one negotiating tactic.
He added that we must "rise above petty politics," and focus on our
nations' common interests and concerns. He called it "counterproductive"
to view Iran as a threat; this charge is whipped up by "alarmists." He
vowed again that Iran will not develop a nuclear bomb, saying this would
be "contrary to Islamic norms."

I wondered, as he spoke, how he sized up our president. In roughly 90
minutes of a speech followed by questions, he didn't say, and nobody
thought to ask him.

Notice al-Qaeda standing in the USAID tent. This picture sums up Obama foreign policy in a nutshell.

What is the response from the Obama administration? State Department
official: This just shows the necessity of helping the “rebels”.
Unbelievable.

From The Blaze:

Terrorist fighters with an Al
Qaeda-affiliated group in Syria seized weapons and other supplies meant
for the secular Syrian Supreme Military Council, U.S. State Department
and other western officials confirmed to TheBlaze.

According to reports from Syria, small
arms and ammunition stashed at a warehouse located along the border town
of Azaz supplied by Saudi Arabia and Qatar were taken more than a week
ago by the Al Qaeda affiliate.

A State Department official with
knowledge of the incident confirmed to TheBlaze that U.S. ready-to-eat
meals, known as MREs, and other non-lethal supplies were taken by
fighters with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, known as ISIS. The
group is extremely dangerous and threatened this month to “cleanse”
towns along the border of any secular Muslims and pro-western opposition
groups, according to reports.

“We can confirm that ISIS has seized
control of a warehouse containing a small number of U.S. MREs intended
for the Supreme Military Council,” a State Department official told
TheBlaze.

The clashes between the Free Syrian
Army and the Al Qaeda affiliate in the town of Azaz, where the supplies
were stolen from, “illustrates how vitally important it is that we
continue to provide assistance to moderate opposition forces who share
our deep concerns over the threat that extremists pose to the
communities within Syria and to their country’s future,” the official
said.

In an interview with TheBlaze’s TV “For The Record,”Free Syrian Army ground commander Col. Riad El Asaad said his men would
fight Al Qaeda factions that have penetrated Syria. El Asaad said he
and many of his men are targets of the foreign Al Qaeda factions in his
country.

The State Department official said that
despite “extensive vetting to mitigate the risk,” non-lethal assistance
can end up in the hands of unintended recipients, such as terrorist
groups.

“We continually stress the importance
of all countries channeling non-lethal assistance through [the Syrian
Opposition Coalition] and [the Supreme Military Council],” the official
added. “We are working with our allies to marginalize terrorist
organizations and prevent material support from outside the country
reaching these groups.”

Still, deciphering between opposition forces and terrorist groups is not simple.

James Carafano, a senior defense
analyst, with the Heritage Foundation think tank in Washington, D.C.
said the administration’s failure to handle the Syrian crisis early on
has led to major failures in current policy.

“The administration is essentially
managed to be fueling both (Syria President Bashar Al) Assad’s regime
and the terrorist groups in this civil war simultaneously,” Carafano
said. “We’re strengthening Assad’s hand and we’re sending non-lethal aid
— which is supposed to be aiding the secular fighters — and watching it
get funneled into the hands of the terrorists.”

A
Syrian rebel fighter points his gun toward pro-regime fighters as he
holds a position in a building in the Syrian eastern town of Deir Ezzor,
Sept. 26, 2013. (Getty Images)

According to a report from the Long War Journal website,
two brigades with the Free Syrian Army that operate in Syria’s Raqqah
province have joined the Al Nusrah Front for the People of the Levant,
the other major Al Qaeda group in Syria.

The Raqqah Revolutionaries Brigade and
the God’s Victory Brigade abandoned their secular command and pledged
loyalty to the Al Nusrah last week, Reuters reported.

The Raqqah Revolutionaries Brigade is
believed to have more than 700 fighters in its ranks.

According to the
Long War Journal, the “size of the God’s Victory Brigade, which
announced its merger with the Al Nusrah Front on Facebook, was not
disclosed, but it is said to have 15 battalions.” Those battalions can
have dozens to hundreds of fighters, according to the website.

Rebel fighters hold their position on Sept. 26, 2013 in Syrian eastern town of Deir Ezzor. (Getty Images)

Earlier this week, TheBlaze reported on a photo
of ISIS-linked Commander Muhajireen Kavkaz wa Sham, who along with
other rebels, appeared to be donning battle gear and a rocket-propelled
grenade inside a U.S. Agency for International Development tent.

“It looks like they got the tent from
the raid on the depot,” said a U.S. official, who asked not to be named
due to the nature of their work. “It’s not surprising – it happens in
war zones – bad guys sometimes get their hands on weapons not intended
for them.”

27 September 2013

A few years ago, after the publication of my book America Alone,
an exasperated reader wrote to advise me to lighten up, on the grounds
that “we’re rich enough to be stupid.” That’s to say, Western
democracies and their citizens are the wealthiest societies ever known,
and no matter how much of our energies are wasted on pointless
hyper-regulation for the business class and multigenerational welfare
for the dependency class and Transgender and Colonialism Studies for our
glittering youth, we can afford it, and the central fact of our wealth
will ensure that our fortunes do not change. Since the collapse of
Lehman Brothers in 2008, we have been less rich, and our stupidity ought
in theory to be less affordable. Instead, it’s been supersized. To take
only the most obvious example, President Obama has added six-and-a-half
trillion bucks to the national debt, and has nothing to show for it. As
Churchill would say, had his bust not been bounced from the Oval
Office, never in the field of human spending has so much been owed by so
many for so little.

The West’s rivals do not think like this. China is now
the second-biggest economy on the planet, but it has immense structural
problems: As I’ve been saying for years, it will get old before it gets
rich. Thanks to its grotesque “one-child” policy, it has the most
male-heavy demographic cohort in history — no chicks and millions of
guys who can’t get any action, which is not normally a recipe for social
stability. Despite being extremely large, the country is resource-poor.
But you can’t say it’s not thinking outside the box. The Daily Telegraph
in London reported this week that the Chinese have just signed a deal
to lease five percent of Ukraine (or an area about the size of Belgium)
to grow crops and raise pigs on. And I’d doubt it will stop with
post-Soviet republics on the Euro-fringe: It’s not impossible to imagine
China buying, say, the Greek islands. Beijing thinks the
half-millennium blip of Euro-American dominance is coming to an end and
the world is returning to its natural state of Chinese preeminence. The
West assumes it can endure as a kind of upscale boutique unaffected by
the changes beyond. Like, say, the frozen-yogurt shop at the Westgate
mall in Nairobi — until last weekend.

China’s Ukraine deal may
sound kinda wacky, but the People’s Republic consumes about 20 percent
of the world’s food yet has (thanks to rapid industrialization) only 9
percent of its farmland. As Big Government solutions go, renting 5
percent of a sovereign nation to use as your vegetable garden and pig
farm is a comparatively straightforward answer to the problem at hand.
By contrast, try explaining American “health” “care” “reform” to the
Chinese: You could rent the entire Ukraine for about 3 percent of the
cost of Obamacare, and what does it solve? My colleague Michelle Malkin
revealed this week that her family has now joined the massed ranks of
Obamacare victims: Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield sent her a “Dear John”
letter explaining why they’d be seeing less of each other. “To meet the
requirements of the new laws, your current plan can no longer be
continued beyond your 2014 renewal date.”

Beyond the president’s
characteristically breezy lie that “if you like your health-care plan,
you will be able to keep your health-care plan” is the sheer nuttiness
of what’s happening. For years, Europeans and “progressive” Americans
have raged at the immorality of the U.S. medical system: All those
millions with no health coverage! But Michelle Malkin had coverage and
suddenly, under what Obama calls “universal health care,” she doesn’t.
The CBO’s most recent calculations estimate that in 2023, a decade after
the implementation of Obamacare, there will still be over 30 million
people uninsured — or about the population of Canada. That doesn’t sound
terribly “universal,” and I would bet it’s something of a low-ball
figure: As many employers are discovering, one of the simplest ways “to
meet the requirements of the new laws” and still stay just about solvent
is to shift your workers from family plans to individual plans, and
tell their spouses and children to go look elsewhere. Does it achieve
its other goal of “containing costs,” already higher than anywhere else?
No. Avik Roy reports in Forbes that Obamacare will increase
individual-market premiums by 62 percent for women, 99 percent for men.
In America, “insuring” against disaster now costs more than you’d pay in
most countries for disaster.

No one has ever before attempted to devise a uniform health system
for 300 million people — for the very good reason that it probably can’t
be done. Britain’s National Health Service serves a population less
than a fifth the size of America’s and is the third-largest employer on
the planet after the Indian National Railways and the Chinese People’s
Liberation Army, the last of which is now largely funded by American
taxpayers through interest payment on federal debt. A single-payer U.S.
system would be bigger than Britain’s NHS, India’s railways, and China’s
army combined, at least in its bureaucracy. So, as in banking and
housing and college tuition and so many other areas of endeavor,
Washington is engaging in a kind of under-the-counter nationalization,
in which the husk of a nominally private industry is conscripted to
enforce government rules — and ruthlessly so, as Michelle Malkin and
many others have discovered.

Obama’s pointless, traceless super-spending is now (as
they used to say after 9/11) “the new normal.” Nancy Pelosi assured the
nation last weekend that everything that can be cut has been cut and
there are no more cuts to be made. And the disturbing thing is that, as a
matter of practical politics, she may well be right. Many people still
take my correspondent’s view: If you have old money well managed, you
can afford to be stupid — or afford the government’s stupidity on your
behalf. If you’re a social-activist celebrity getting $20 million per
movie, you can afford the government’s stupidity. If you’re a tenured
professor or a unionized bureaucrat whose benefits were chiseled in
stone two generations ago, you can afford it. If you’ve got a wind farm
and you’re living large on government “green energy” investments, you
can afford it. If you’ve got the contract for signing up Obamaphone
recipients, you can afford it.

But out there beyond the islands of
privilege most Americans don’t have the same comfortably padded margin
for error, and they’re hunkering down. Obamacare is something new in
American life: the creation of a massive bureaucracy charged with
downsizing you — to a world of fewer doctors, higher premiums, lousier
care, more debt, fewer jobs, smaller houses, smaller cars, smaller,
fewer, less; a world where worse is the new normal. Would Americans,
hitherto the most buoyant and expansive of people, really consent to
live such shrunken lives? If so, mid-20th-century America and its
assumptions of generational progress will be as lost to us as the Great
Ziggurat of Ur was to 19th-century Mesopotamian date farmers.

George
Orwell, after attending a meeting of impoverished but passive miners,
remarked sadly that “there is no turbulence left in England.” The
Democrats, and much of the Republican establishment, have made a bet
that there is no turbulence left in America, and the citizenry will
stand mute before Obamacare’s wrecking ball. Unless they’re willing to
accept a worse life for their children and grandchildren, middle-class
Americans need to prove them wrong.

Labour Participation Rate is 63.2%…a level not seen since 1978 during the glory days of Stagflation and Carter’s Cardigan.(added)

Workers in low-wage industries clocked the shortest average workweek on record in July, new Labor Department data show.

The 29 million non-managerial workers in private-sector
industries which pay up to about $14.50 per hour, on average, put in a
27.4-hour week, a level previously matched only at the depths of the
recession in 2009.

As the recovery began that summer, average weekly hours staged a
recovery that erased most of the recession’s decline. But the workweek
recovery began to reverse in early 2012, and the drop-off has
accelerated in 2013 —just as the onset of ObamaCare’s
employer mandate created new incentives for employers to restrict
workers to fewer than 30 hours per week.

…in industries for which ObamaCare’s coverage mandates could mean
substantial new costs — those in which wages are low and the ranks of
the uninsured tend to be high – something is seriously depressing the
workweek.

…the average workweek for such firms has fallen to a record low of 27.3 hours from 28.6 hours in March 2010, when ObamaCare became law.

This won’t surprise Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid or
GOP old bull Sen. John McCain — the largest chunk of the Republican
Party is now very conservative.

According to a new PPP poll, which has Sen. Ted Cruz the top choice
for the 2016 Republican nomination, those who describe themselves as
“very conservative” make up 39 percent of the splintered party. Add in
those who consider themselves “somewhat conservative,” and the
right-leaning voters comprise 76 percent of the party.

In the new poll of 743 Republican primary voters, 1 percent called
themselves “very liberal,” 4 percent “somewhat liberal,” and just 18
percent as “moderate.”

Among the conservative voters, Cruz is the leading choice
for the GOP nomination. He won 34 percent of that group. But he also
shows remarkable crossover as 32 percent of the “very liberal” crowd
also prefer him.

His likely rival, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, wins just 4 percent of the “very conservative crowd” and 38 percent of the “very liberal” group.

Sen. Ted Cruz yielded the floor shortly after noon Wednesday at the
behest of Reid after a lengthy quasi-filibuster. The Texas Republican
had reportedly negotiated an agreement with Reid beforehand that he
would be able to speak until noon Wednesday but not hold an actual
filibuster.

Cruz clearly remained energetic after speaking for more than 21
hours, suggesting that if Reid had not stopped the speech to hold the
stopgap budget vote, Cruz could easily have shattered the-then Strom Thurmond’s
racist filibuster record.

The late South Carolina Sen. Thurmond holds thefilibuster record at 24 hours, 18 minutes for a 1957 diatribe against civil rights
legislation. Thanks to Reid, Thurmond’s reprehensible stemwinder will
remain #1 in Senate record books.

“I ask my friend from Texas to, uh, yield to me, without losing his right to the floor, for a colloquy,” Reidtold Cruz, who had been speaking for more than 21 hours.

“With the reservation that I do not lose the right to the floor” Cruz said he would yield to a colloquy.

“This is not a filibuster. This is an agreement that he and I made
that he could talk,” Reid said in his subsequent remarks before Cruz
yielded the floor.

Cruz was speaking to keep the budget resolution from coming to the
Senate floor because it sets the stage for Reid to delete provisions
defunding Obamacare.

Had Reid allowed Cruz to continue his quasi-filibuster past 24 hours,
18 minutes, the Senate could have given Cruz the record with an
asterisk or something. But no, as it stands, Thurmond still holds the
Senate record for his anti-civil rights filibuster. Thanks, Senator
Reid.

The artificial limit on Cruz’s quasi-filibuster also means the record
still belongs to the Democratic Party. Thurmond was a Democrat at the
time of his racist filibuster.

No vote or debate was scheduled. So why couldn't read let Cruz precede and, in a bipartisan fashion, demolish a scourge on the history and records of the United States Senate - one that deserves no place of honour or memory? A record-breaking racist diatribe could have been thrown upon the ash heap of history.

My takeaway: Senator Harry Reid and his Progressive Partners on both sides of the aisle, along with the Washington-Manhattan Establishment, hate Senator Ted Cruz so much that they would rather let stand a 56-year-old hideous relic of a Jim Crow past: One originating in the Democratic Party. Evidently, they prefer a filibuster record set by a racist Democrat than one set by a minority, whose own family escaped tyranny in both the forms of the Batista Regime and the Castro Communist Era.

On 28 August 1957, Thurmond mounted his historic filibuster in an unsuccessful attempt to derail passage of the Eisenhower Civil Rights Act of 1957, which, to be fair, was opposed by the likes of Senator John F Kennedy, Senator James Fulbright, Senator Sam Ervin, Senator Richard Russell, Senator Russell Long, and Senator John Stennis. He spoke for 24 hours and 18 minutes as a Democrat and proud segregationist. While Thurmond later - much later - apologised, he didn't do so until he left the party of which he had been a member for 62 years; however, the filibuster record remains to this day:

A) Second
place remains: The 23 hours and 30 minute filibuster mounted by Senator
Alphonse D'Amato (Democrat-New York) in 1986 to stall a military
appropriations bill
that cut funding for a warplane built by a company headquartered in his
district remains in second place.

B) Third place remains with Senator Wayne Morse (Independent-OR), who spoke for 22 hours and 26 minutes, to stall debate on the Tidelands Oil bill on 24-25 April 1953.

C) Ted Cruz's 26 September 2013 'filibuster' of 21
hours and 19 minutes on the subjects of defunding Obamacare, debt, and
liberty did, however, dethrone an Early American Progressive Icon, Senator
Robert La Follette, Sr, of Wisconsin. La Follete had filibustered 18 hours and 23
minutes to block debate on the Aldrich-Vreeland Currency
Bill, which allowed the Treasury to lend currency to banks during
financial crises, whilst the 'fiery Progressive Senator' delivered a
stem-winding oration championing the 'family farmers and the labouring
poor.' La Follette had given the fourth-longest filibuster in history until Senator Ted Cruz passed the 18 hour and 23 minute mark.

I guess letting go of a vile, despicable, deplorable, disdainful, racist piece of diatribic tripe has - presumably - earned its place in Senate and Democratic lore. Perhaps, we shouldn't be surprised that the Senate Democrats would rather demonstrate their utter disdain for a man, who obviously did not receive the 'Dissent is Patriotic...only if you are a Democrat' notification, than they wanted to MemoryHole another one of their connections to slavery, secession, segregation and socialism.